Tag: infrastructure

Oracle Linux in-place upgrade. Good, bad and the cloud. #JoelKallmanDay

Oracle Linux 7 was released in 2014 and the system is close to its sunset. The premier support for the system will be wrapped up by July 2024 and it is time to think about moving forward. All the new systems, as I can see, are using version 8 and some even version 9. So it is time for an upgrade. And when we speak about upgrading we usually have two options – in-place and out-of-place. The in-place upgrade modifies the system on the same box keeping all the users data intact and the second approach is more like a migration when you move all your app stack and data to a new box with a new version of the OS. So, how difficult is the in-place upgrade and when it makes sense?

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Oracle Database Service for Azure

Recently Oracle and Microsoft announced availability of their new service – Oracle Database Service for Azure. It raises the level of integration and interoperability between Oracle Cloud and Microsoft Azure. With the new service Microsoft’s customers are able to create and manage Oracle databases created in Oracle cloud and use them for applications located in Azure. That sounds great and moves us one step closer to a real multi-cloud environment. Before proceeding, let me clarify what I mean as the “real” multi-cloud. I mean an environment where different pieces of the same IT service are located in different clouds working as a whole.

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New kid in the block – Rocky linux.

If you’ve been following the recent changes in the linux world you probably remember how Red Hat and Centos announced in December 2020 that the CentOS Project was shifting focus to CentOS Stream and support for CentOS Linux 8 had been cut to December 31, 2021. It created a wave of discussions in the community about the future for Centos as an enterprise platform and some people started to look to alternative Linux distributives. As a result we got a new, community-driven downstream built, same as Centos used to be, Rocky linux.

The downstream build is based on the same code base as the vendor distributive and resembles most features of the “parent” vendor Linux. It is following all the releases after they have been built by the vendor. In most of my tests I am using Oracle Linux when I am in the Oracle cloud but I am using Centos in Google cloud and other public clouds like Azure or AWS. Now we have Rocky Linux available on those platforms and I’ve had a quick look and done some testing using the Rocky Linux 8.4 (Green Obsidian).

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Is Oracle cloud only for Oracle?

Several days ago, discussing public cloud solutions and competition between different providers, one of the people mentioned that Oracle Cloud is just for Oracle products. At the same time, AWS and Azure are more vendor agnostic. I was a bit surprised by that statement but it appeared that several other people shared the same view. I decided to write the blog and show what options Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) has for different workloads.

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Oracle Cloud Infrastructure multi-factor authentication

For some time we didn’t have a multi-factor authentication in the Oracle cloud and those short-lived numeric codes were one of the best way to reinforce your protection and prevent a bad actor to break your credentials. It is not 100% protection but it is well better than a username and a password. Just recently I read in the Oracle Infrastructure cloud blog about new native multi-factor authentication for Identity and Access Management (IAM) system on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). Of course, I went directly to my account and started to test it. Continue reading “Oracle Cloud Infrastructure multi-factor authentication”